Excellent, a Must See

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is one of many films in a sub-par collection of animated shorts entitled "Avoid Eye Contact: Volume One". Most of these shorts did absolutely nothing for me and that's a real shame, as I usually love these sorts of compilations--having seen all three of The Animation Show DVDs, several Spike and Mike ones, collections of Canadian Film Board cartoons and many, many others. I really wanted to like this. Fortunately, GOOD NIGHT NORMA...GOODNIGHT MILTON worked and worked well. While the very simple animation wasn't great, the story and sensibilities were!The film begins with a couple waving goodbye to their house guests. Then, as the couple slowly undresses and readies for bed, the film gets WEIRD!!! The talk and talk about how they didn't like the couple who left (despite acting very chummy when the film started) and complained that the couple are so fake!! This hypocrisy is great, because as they whine about this couple and how they are jerks, Norma and Milton slowly begin revealing their own hypocrisy--in a very grisly way. However, it would truly spoil the film to say more, so I'll wrap it up by saying that the payoff was worth it. A nice and insightful picture.

This short animation is about a couple coming home, and talking things over while preparing to go to bed. The animation style is best compared to some of Bill Plympton's animations. It's a little rough and the coloring is simple. The animations are basically accompanying the dialogue, which is the most important factor in this film. The dialogue is very well acted, something that doesn't happen often in animations, and the couple starts quarreling upon entering their house up until almost the end, when they go to bed. While preparing for sleep, they slowly lose their human side (you'll understand why if you see the film) and they also stop arguing, which very likely is the moral of the story. It's very enjoyable to watch and a pretty original animation.